BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom: Britain’s new interior minister on Tuesday vowed to prevent migrants from claiming asylum if they arrive through an “illegal” route, and stop small boat crossings across the Channel from France.
Suella Braverman said the situation, in which criminal gangs were exploiting vulnerable migrants, had “gone on for far too long.”
Irregular migration is a thorny political issue for the UK government, which promised to tighten borders after the country left the European Union.
But a partnership deal with Rwanda signed earlier this year under the premiership of Boris Johnson to send some migrants to the African country for resettlement has so far failed.
Deportation flights have been stymied by a series of legal challenges in the UK courts and at the European Court of Human Rights.
Braverman said Britain needed to “find a way to make the Rwanda scheme work” and denounced the intervention of the ECHR, describing it as a “closed process with an unnamed judge and without any representation by the UK.”
“I will commit to look to bring forward legislation that the only route to the United Kingdom is through a safe and legal route,” she told the ruling Conservative party’s annual conference.
“If you deliberately enter the United Kingdom from a safe country you should be swiftly removed to your home country or relocated to Rwanda. That is where your asylum claim will be considered,” she said.
Reacting to Braverman’s speech, the PCS trade union which represents civil servants responsible for implementing the policy, said she did not “appear to understand the UK’s international obligations under the Geneva Convention.”
“Time and again we have called upon the government to use the expertise of our members in the Home Office to develop a solution to this crisis through safe passage,” PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said.
“Instead, it chooses to continually demonize refugees to deflect from its hopeless inability to address the cost of living crisis facing the people of this country.”
Official government figures last month showed more migrants had crossed the Channel to the UK from northern France so far this year than in the whole of 2021, when 28,526 made the journey.
More than 33,500 people have now arrived in Britain.
Braverman’s speech played into Prime Minister Liz Truss’s right-wing agenda, urging police to stop “virtue signalling” on issues such as race and gender.
She promised to empower officers to stop “the mob” of direct-action protesters who use “guerilla tactics” to bring “chaos and misery” to the public.
“Whether you’re Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain or Extinction Rebellion, you cross a line when you break the law and that’s why we’ll keep putting you behind bars,” she added.
On Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police said it had arrested 54 Just Stop Oil protesters on suspicion of “wilful obstruction of the highway” after a demonstration blocked traffic in central London.
UK interior minister vows to stop migrant ‘small boats’
https://arab.news/4zh5v
UK interior minister vows to stop migrant ‘small boats’
- Irregular migration is a thorny political issue for the UK government
- Deportation flights have been stymied by a series of legal challenges in the UK courts and at the European Court of Human Rights
FBI says arson suspect targeted Mississippi synagogue because it’s a Jewish house of worship
JACKSON, Mississippi: A suspect in an arson fire at a synagogue that was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan decades ago admitted to targeting the historic institution because it’s a Jewish house of worship and confessed what he had done to his father, who turned him in to authorities after observing burn marks on his son’s ankles, hands and face, the FBI said Monday.
Stephen Pittman was charged with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. The 19-year-old suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the building, which he referred to as “the synagogue of Satan,” according to an FBI affidavit filed in US District Court in Mississippi on Monday.
At a first appearance hearing Monday in federal court, a public defender was appointed for Pittman, who attended via video conference call from a hospital bed. Both of his hands were visibly bandaged. He told the judge that he was a high school graduate and had three semesters of college.
Prosecutors said he could face five to 20 years in prison if convicted. When the judge read him his rights, Pittman said, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
A crime captured on video
The fire ripped through the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday. No congregants or firefighters were injured. Security camera video released Monday by the synagogue showed a masked and hooded man using a gas can to pour liquid on the floor and a couch in the building’s lobby.
The weekend fire badly damaged the 165-year-old synagogue’s library and administrative offices. Five Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — located inside the sanctuary were being assessed for smoke damage. Two Torahs inside the library, where the most severe damage was done, were destroyed. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was behind glass and was not damaged in the fire, according to the congregation.
The suspect’s father contacted the FBI and said his son had confessed to setting the building on fire. Pittman had texted his father a photo of the rear of the synagogue before the fire, with the message, “There’s a furnace in the back.” His father had pleaded with his son to return home, but “Pittman replied back by saying he was due for a homerun and ‘I did my research,’” the affidavit said.
During an interview with investigators, Pittman said he had stopped at a gas station on his way to the synagogue to purchase the gas used in the fire. He also took the license plate off his vehicle at the gas station. He used an ax to break out a window of the synagogue, poured gas inside and used a torch lighter to start the fire, the FBI affidavit said.
The FBI later recovered a burned cellphone believed to be Pittman’s and took possession of a hand torch that a congregant had found.
A congregation determined to rebuild
Yellow police tape on Monday blocked off the entrances to the synagogue building, which was surrounded by broken glass and soot. Bouquets of flowers were laid on the ground at the building’s entrance — including one with a note that said, “I’m so very sorry.”
The congregation’s president, Zach Shemper, has vowed to rebuild the synagogue and said several churches had offered their spaces for worship during the rebuilding process. Shemper attended Pittman’s court appearance Monday but didn’t comment afterward.
With just several hundred people in the community, it has never been particularly easy being Jewish in Mississippi’s capital city, but members of Beth Israel have taken special pride in keeping their traditions alive in the heart of the Deep South.
Nearly every aspect of Jewish life in Jackson could be found under Beth Israel’s roof. The midcentury modern building not only housed the congregation but also the Jewish Federation, a nonprofit provider of social services and philanthropy that is the hub of Jewish society in most US cities. The building also is home to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which provides resources to Jewish communities in 13 southern states. A Holocaust memorial was outdoors behind the synagogue building.
Because Jewish children throughout the South have attended summer camp for decades in Utica, Mississippi, about 30 miles southwest of Jackson, many retain a fond connection to the state and its Jewish community.
“Jackson is the capital city, and that synagogue is the capital synagogue in Mississippi,” said Rabbi Gary Zola, a historian of American Jewry who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. “I would call it the flagship, though when we talk about places like New York and Los Angeles, it probably seems like Hicksville.”
A rabbi who stood up to the KKK
Beth Israel as a congregation was founded in 1860 and acquired its first property, where it built Mississippi’s first synagogue, after the Civil War. In 1967, the synagogue moved to its current location.
It was bombed by local KKK members not long after relocating, and then two months after that, the home of the synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, was bombed because of his outspoken opposition to segregation and racism.
At a time when opposition to racial segregation could be dangerous in the Deep South, many Beth Israel congregants hoped the rabbi would just stay quiet, but Nussbaum was unshakable in believing he was doing the right thing by supporting civil rights, Zola said.
“He had this strong, strong sense of justice,” Zola said.
